Should Certain Books Be Banned in School?

[Music] thank you hi everybody and welcome to open to debate I'm John donvan and this time the question we're debating address is an argument that is playing out all across the United States and with a good deal of acrimony and often noise in school board meetings and that's a setting where let's be honest most of the time the proceedings are pretty well subdued almost sleepy but not so much lately [Applause] next speaker I'm asking that everyone become calm and respectful and I want to remind everyone that you need to address the board don't address the audience address the board that's Roxanne McDonald she is chair of the Dearborn Michigan Board of Education trying last fall to bring order to a meeting where the crowd did a lot of shouting most of them were there angry about books in the school library that they wanted removed they were passionate about it but there were also people at that meeting who were pushing back against that idea and they were also passionate and it's not just Dearborn since 2021 this struggle over books in the classroom and school libraries certain books has spread across the land with a new energy and urgency the content that is proving most sensitive are books with explicit depictions of sex and also books that while not explicit in their depiction of sex are taking on themes around lgbtq experience another sensitive area under U.S history how to interpret the impact of 400 years of black slavery in teaching school children who we are as a nation when it comes down to Banning books it all comes comes down to principles and to content so we are debating this question should certain books be banned in schools let's meet our debaters and arguing that the answer to that question is yes activist and Senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute Chris ruffa welcome Chris to open to debate it's good to be with you and arguing that the answer to the question should certain books be banned in schools is a no political scientist author associate professor at Johns Hopkins University School of advanced international studies and a very very frequent visitor to our program Yasha monk welcome back Yasha thank you great to see you John so we want to get to your opening statements in just about a minute but first uh a slightly more personal question for each of you about about why you're here to understand your connection to this question and Chris can you go first why do you want to take on this topic with us what are your stakes in this sure well I mean it's it's both uh personal and also political I have kids in school so I care about what their education will be and I also care about the country and so as we are playing out these sometimes fraught debates um I think it's important that conservative families conservative parents and and conservative states have a voice in the debate thank you Chris Yasha the same question to you you again you consider your no position important enough to be here debating it what are your stakes in this well first I'm an educator I'm in the classroom at the college level all of the time and so I care about my freedom to teach what I can and when I care about free speech and the first amendment I care about protecting Americans from government intrusion all right thank you Josh it's good to have that perspective from both of you but I want to now get on to our opening statements we want to give each of you a couple of minutes to make your case and Chris you're up first again your answer to the question should certain books be banned in school is yes tell us why yeah I'd like to clarify even right off the bat that prompt should certain books ever be banned and so I don't have to convince you or anyone listening that certain books should be banned or many books should be banned just that at least it's sometimes appropriate for for schools to restrict content within the K-12 environment and in a lot of ways I'm in a difficult position we're in a society and a culture that would like to abolish all limits uh and I'm arguing for a prudent uh re-establishment of those limits but I'd like to make really four key arguments on this question the first is a legal argument the Supreme Court has held that schools have an absolute right to regulate books in the curriculum and a partial right to regulate books in school libraries and to restrict books that are quote pervasively vulgar or educationally unsuitable again this is not an unlimited right but it is a partial right where in some cases it's prudent to restrict certain content the second is a political argument as we've seen in that clip the voters of Dearborn that elect their local school district should have a say in what kind of ideas and Concepts and ideologies are transmitted to their kids both as voters and as parents they should be the ultimate Arbiters of what values the schools teach to their kids and the parent Revolt across the country shows that this is a political question the nature of it is inherently Democratic and I believe in opposition to my opponents on this debate in the Democratic principle that the people should decide the third is a practical argument schools has limited time in the curriculum and schools have limited space on Library shelves this requires selection certain books will be picked other books will not be picked and so the question isn't simply should certain books be banned although that is part of it it's really baked into the very nature of limitation itself and I would argue that there are five categories that uh or criteria that we should think about age inappropriate books pseudoscientific books books that Advance race hatred books that are better understood as political propaganda and then of course pornography as we're looking at the literature should we have you know Odyssey you know homers The Odyssey or a book on uh pornography and sex apps I would say that the only prudent choice is to choose the great literature and finally the moral argument we've known since Aristotle that there is a noble education and a vulgar or Base education and it is our duty as parents as voters and as Citizens to shape the values in our institutions towards those highest principles and again this is a liberal principle from the Latin root of the word Liber meaning free we want educate education that liberates students not just from external constraints but also from the passions and other uh and other internal or psychological things that would tear them down so the stakes of this debate again are not if certain books should be banned but if it is ever appropriate and my argument is in the affirmative we would all like an unlimited and open free Society with no restrictions but when we're talking about kids when we're talking about the Democratic governance of schools it's only prudent to take some of the most toxic uh a partisan and false content and and restrict it from classrooms thank you Chris rufo and that brings us now to you Yasha monk Yasha your answer to the question should certain books be bent in school is a no please tell us why it is no look I have some obvious points of agreements with Chris Ruffo um you know obviously there needs to be a process to decide what gets taught in classrooms and what kind of books a library stocks nobody thinks that you should be able to consume porn in your Middle School library um so the question is not whether it is responsibility of teachers and Librarians in schools to form minds and to educate children to think about what kind of content they need in order to have Rich lives and be productive members of society that is obvious the real question is whether books should be banned and who who is doing the Banning um what uh Chris rifle has supported across state legislation what he's proposing for federal legislation is an end round around the current system in which rather than teachers deciding what to teach Librarians who the great majority of public school parents trust making decisions about what to purchase principles and super School superintendents and local school boards stepping in when there's gross errors of judgment by these people he would have far away legislators in your state capital Congressman in Washington DC pass very vaguely worded legislation about what kind of content schools should never touch very vaguely worded registration restrictions on anything about sexuality about identity politics about quote-unquote critical race Fury and this is already leading to the kind of chilling effects to the kind of abuses that broadly worded restrictions on speech always entail many teachers are afraid to do simple things like mention a weekend trip with a same-sex partner when we look at the kind of books that have been challenged that have been banned in America recently it's not frivolous books it is not uh works of pornography it is a popular works of fiction and often very good works of fiction in the 2000s the most challenged book was Harry Potter in the last years one of the most challenge books has been the handman's tale by the renowned Canadian author Margaret Atwood and you know this Banning that is happening it's not whoever books are banned it is who is doing the Banning is part of a wider program because Republican politicians like Ron DeSantis in Florida and by the way some Democrats like Evan Newsom in California as well are trying to weaponize the state in order to interfere with how Americans lead the life according to hb99 a bill that's now pending on the Florida legislature whole Majors would be abolished in public universities in the state professors would not be allowed to teach anything but constitutes identity politics political appointees could fire faculty members at will for example when they engage in political speech or activities that they dislike Rhonda Santos has been using legislation to punish corporations for uh closing legislation that is like for engaging in political speech and Chris Ruffo is the intellectual Godfather of these efforts has been proposing and cheerleading them uh all the way um I came to America in good part because I love the United States Constitution I care deeply about the Bill of Rights I believe in freedom of speech I've been dismayed in the last years about the fact that some of my friends and colleagues on the left have started to this free speech have started to think of it as a conservative value but what we're seeing with these attacks starting with books in schools but going well beyond that by conservatives like Chris Ruffo is a betrayal of just those values Banning books in schools by far away legislatures is an attack on the First Amendment it is a betrayal of the American culture of free speech it is deeply Un-American and that's why I post such efforts thank you Joshua okay sounds like we a lot to get to there we are going to be moving into our next round in just a moment the question is should certain books be banned in schools I find that these books have no value whatsoever to the benefit of the education of our children in Marion County Public Schools and as far as the summation of this book this is a work of pornographic pornography romanticized as normal life that's a member of the public speaking in Marion County Florida in opposition to a book called Red Hood the sort of public engagement that we are seeing a lot of and that has prompted the the debate that we're having right now we have heard opening statements from Chris Ruffo and yoshimonk let's move into some discussion I'm sure it was well intentioned but I would like to correct the record because some of the things that Joshua said are just flat out factually untrue he said that I've advocated for federal legislation regulating what's happening in the local curricula and public schools this is of course totally false he talked about a university regulation in Florida which is again uh totally unrelated to the topic at hand of should school books be banned in the K-12 environment he also claimed that Harry Potter and the handmaid's tale are the kind of books that are being challenged in schools I personally would not advocate for those books being excluded from schools I think they're totally appropriate at the correct age levels but in fact the books that are most challenged in recent years are books like genderqueer our books uh like this book is gay that talk about uh you know sexual devices they talk about how to use sex apps to hook up with people uh they depict a graphic uh sexual activities between adults and minors in some cases and so you know he's got his head in the sand here that the nature of the parents objection is to this material that is wildly inappropriate for students and on a substantive level he likes to kind of hide behind the First Amendment saying that he loves the First Amendment but he should look at the jurisprudence island tree School District versus Pico a 1982 case that is really uh the the the the established standard here says that schools have an absolute right to regulate what's happening in the in the classroom and finally the last point is that he says that state governments should have no role in dictating what happens in Public School classrooms this is of course absolutely Preposterous the state government is the uh is the authority over classrooms state governments in all 50 states currently set the curriculum for what happens in all public schools and so what he's maybe thinking is that we need a totally different education system from the ground up he could make that argument but this is already the status quo the state decides the curriculum the state decides standards the state decides decides required textbooks and so this is simply a case of the state doing what it always does making decisions this book or that book this idea that idea this is a normal part of business and ultimately what I think Yasha and and his and his allies would like is outside pressure groups and then unelected bureaucrats to decide what they want to do with other people's kids instead of parents and voters through their legislature and so again I'm on the side of the First Amendment Amendment I'm on a side of democratic principles I'm on the side of allowing the 14 000 local school districts to decide at that school board level what they want to teach and yasha's on the side of of unelected bureaucrats and activist organizations that want to shove ideology and in some cases shove pornographic materials onto other people's young children and I think that's why you see such a furious reaction from parents yeah well I'm afraid to say that the fact that Chris has in this are simply wrong I'm looking at the moment at a list of the 10 most banned books in the first half of the 2022-2023 school year compiled by a pen and among the 10 most banned books is precisely the handmaid's tale the graphic novel version there's a book that is among the 10 most what is the number one book that is called sold which is about I'm looking at it a girl Lakshmi who is who is sold into sexual slavery so it obviously has some mature content in it but not for proven purposes not for purposes of pornography but for purposes of telling this harrowing story and by the way telling us some of the terrible things that are happening in the world that might put into context for students in America some of the own chances that we have and whether not as pervasive as terrible as they are in other places where something but could actually make students more patriotic as well so the point is not whether um you know sometimes books that are banned are books that I the teacher would not decide to assign or either Brian would not decide to buy the pointers but when you have a system which encourages activists and often extremists to come into the process and to try and ban Books A lot of the time this will have a severe chilling effect on very worthwhile forms of classroom instruction and very worthwhile literature and these two books I think are an important example of that let me make another important point because you know Chris is saying that this is just about local people deciding what kind of thing things are being taught in their schools and making those Democratic decisions I don't think that that is true I'm looking at a post that he himself has published um that's been two months ago on his sub stack called planning for the next White House um uh touting the anti-work policy touting a summit that he has hosted developing an anti-work policy agenda for the net conservative Administration which includes executive orders uh uh interfering with how universities and corporations should govern themselves which has a point called University reform policy um which wants to use the investigative authority of the federal government in order to interfere with those public colleges and universities which explicitly is talking about uh using executive power to quote unquote defund the left these uh inextricably related the question we're asking here is not whether every book that has ever been published should be taught to 12 year olds of course the answer to that is no that is a silly debate the question is whether Chris's broader policy agenda of trying to use and weaponize state and federal power to reshape the cultural landscape in the United States is healthy as appropriate is conformable with a culture of free speech and the answer to that is very clearly no I think it's going to be helpful for people who are unfamiliar with some of the content of the books that are in dispute had some picture of that so Chris you mentioned gender queer and genderqueer is a book by Maya Kobe who identifies as non-binary about their experience through a period of coming out as a teenager it's a graphic Memoir by which I mean it's it's like a comic book it's it's got drawings and it's got word balloons it's very personal it shares a lot but some of the illustrations that have been brought up at school board meetings include a teenager full frontal the thighs of a person that are smeared with blood for menstruation and a person depicted in a fantasy sequence or memory sequence performing oral sex on a sex toy that is worn by another person at the waist and my question to you Yasha is if you're eight years old and if you're 14 years old and if you're 18 years old would this be a material that you would consider appropriate for for for students or would you see the case for saying this stuff should not be in the classroom or in the school library so look I haven't read this particular book so I can't express my opinion of this particular book some of what you describe certainly doesn't seem appropriate for young children when you talk about older teenagers I think they you know are close to adulthood and a much broader range of material may be appropriate for them um I don't want to get into the specifics of debating a book I haven't read he's here's I think that you should this according to the panelist is the number one most banned book of 2022 it's genderqueer so even citing the own resources that you brought to the table this is number one answer the question I have agreed from appropriate in in K through 12 schools or not I'm not going to say this about the book I haven't read but it sounds from some of what John said that certainly would not be appropriate for younger children and probably not be appropriate for middle school children may be appropriate for older 16 and 17 year old high school students I agree with Chris that some material is not appropriate for younger children I agree obviously that it is a responsibility of teachers and of librarians and of schools to make educationally and age-appropriate decisions about what kind of content we teach and what is in the local library what we profoundly disagree about is how that model of governance should look like and here I am actually taking in some ways with small C conservative opinion I think that we have an organically grown system in which local people make those decisions over 90 percent of parents of children in public schools trust the Librarians to make those kinds of decisions when librarians make inappropriate decisions when teachers teach something that is inappropriate you have principles of schools you have superintendents of local school systems that can step in the question is whether we should be encouraging Outsiders to step into this process encouraging a culture of censorship where people get into moral panics about Harry Potter and tomorrow panics about handmaiden's tale about moral panics about all kinds of books and the question is whether we should have legislation as we have had in Florida that makes very broad restrictions on the kind of content relating for example to gender and sexuality the teachers are allowed I wanted to ask you this question about genderqueer Chris because I've cited the pages that have been held up at the meetings that have caught that have have uh in the view of parents who are upset about the book mostly been used to justify the book the rest of the book is not like that the rest of the book is a very personal sensitive tale of mayako babes coming out they've they share a lot personally and my question would be if those illustrations were not in the book but the book told the rest of the story about a non-binary person telling their story would that be a book that deserves Banning or not in other words is it just about those images in those scenes if they were cut or were never there in the first place does this book have a place well no because I think it's I think it's much more than that uh genderqueer of course encourages young girls in teaching them how to bind their breasts with binders it's not a teaching book it's a sharing book it has a character dreaming and kind of glamorizing getting a Top surgery or a double mastectomy and then I'll read a quote from this book I mean it says quote I got a new strap-on harness today I can't wait to put it in you it will fit my favorite dildo perfectly I can't wait to have your in my mouth I'm gonna have I'm gonna give you the of your life then I want you inside me and so Yasha you shouldn't have to have read the book to know and I'll ask you very Point Blank would you feel comfortable for example reading that to your own children or I'm not sure if you have children but to call the Neighbors in your neighborhood around and reading that to a group of kids I have not read the book I'm not going to go any specific about it the way that yeah wait wait wait wait wait wait please wait what we're talking about with the more difficult conversation here is about books that some people want removed but other people don't want removed because of what what contains them there are very very few people who are really going to argue for explicit sex in books so I want to bring up another book that I happen to have become aware of years ago when I was living in London there was a book called Heather has two mommies and this book about a young girl who had two lesbian mothers uh caused a big uproar at the time in in the United Kingdom but it's about 30 years old and I am preparing for this I looked at it again and it's a book about a little girl who um becomes aware that most of the kids in her community had a mother and a father but she has two mothers and she sort of thinks about it and talks about it you know a day in her life and there's no explicit sex whatsoever in the book now this book a few months ago in Bucks County Pennsylvania there was a move to get this pulled off the Shelf to me this is the heart kind of the hard case that we're debating here not the easy cases maybe a case where Joshua would make the argument that he would stand up for it again I know you haven't read the book Yasha but I want to move the the conversation just sort of a more realistic place in that sense yeah I I mean again I I haven't read this book about Heather has two mommies from your description it sounds relatively Anodyne I don't know if I even personally uh would find it objectionable but what I do believe um is that local school districts that elect a local school board and 14 000 different jurisdictions across the country should have the ability to select which books they want to be taught in the classroom and select which values they want to be transmitting to their kids and so for example the Muslim Americans in Dearborn Michigan that you highlighted at the beginning of the show um you know they're going to have a different uh set of values and priorities than I would and that certainly than Yasha would but I respect that they have local autonomy to decide what they want in the classroom I do think it matters what the content of the books is because you for example cited Harry Potter which some parents have objected to or how about to kill a mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird is a book that's been banned again and again and again most recently the effort has been because there's an argument made from the left that To Kill a Mockingbird a book about a white lawyer defending a black man accused of a rape in the South centers whiteness and promotes white supremacy and and creates a white savior scenario so there's an argument made by potentially by parents to get the book out so should To Kill a Mockingbird be pulled off the shelf because of protests from the left from my point of view I would oppose something to restrict Harry Potter to restrict To Kill a Mockingbird to restrict Huckleberry Finn but if the parents want it your principle is that the parents want it that that's that that should rule in essence if the Berkeley California school district wants to restrict Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn I I would oppose that I would argue against it but I would also respect their rights to have a different curriculum than other jurisdictions what we're having right now is this attempt to homogenize all school districts with left-wing race and gender ideologies this idea that it's illegitimate for local conservative parents and school board members to place any restrictions on content but look if Berkeley wants to ban Huckleberry Finn I oppose it but it's their right and I would respect it because I believe in pluralism I believe in local control I believe in local elected officials and parents deciding what's best we can have a debate in the Public Square about the wisdom of such a decision but what we can't have is a top-down dictatorial style of ideological imposition that doesn't respect the vast differences in communities I'm astonished to hear you say this because what I thought was an issue between us with our profound disagreement is is precisely whether those decisions should be made in a local way by school teachers and Librarians and principals or whether it should be made by state and federal legislation you have supported very very vocally legislation in the State of Florida that bans any instruction about sex and gender approve the third grade and any instruction that is called age inappropriate which is a very vague difficult to interpret standard above the third great that is not local that is State legislation we're talking about here and so what I'm concerned about is precisely the role of a state in trying to intrude on local decision making in the precise way you claim you oppose so are you saying that at this point you distance yourself from that piece of legislation in Florida because it is so that's what we're talking about when we're not talking about local decisions we're talking about legislature overriding local decision makings and homogenizing what happening in this state not allowed for the kind of a right in diversity of local decision making about what's appropriate in particular communities that you were touting a moment ago you misunderstand how the system of federalism works in the United States unfortunately a again I'm going to correct you I have never advocated for federal control over the curriculum but second all 50 states are the ultimate curricular Authority that's the status quo they have a uh the most profound influence and then they also delegate to local jurisdictions and so the State of Florida had gender and sexuality guidelines at the state level previously now they have new ones you can say the new ones are not correct or not wise or not just you can make any argument you want look States fund K-12 schools States set the standards taxpayers get to vote for their state representatives and they have education committees and they vote on legislation voters can then kick them out if they make the wrong decision according to to the voter's wisdom and if we want to talk about democracy this is how democracy Works Florida says no radical gender theory in K-12 Public Schools California says we're going to be pushing trans activism they're different they should be different uh that's how the Federalist system works in the United States I I think that's a misrepresentation of how the system works and how some of the recent action by uh conservatives and Republican Governors like DeSantis are trying to to change the system clearly states fund public education in the United States clearly states appropriately set for example broad learning goals that structure what kind of things schools should broadly teach what is happening at the moment is a wave of blanket bans on the discussion of broad subjects which are worded so vaguely that they have a very deep and persistent chilling effect on the kind of things that teachers feel will they can bring up in the classroom and that is a new departure characters and books deserve to be defended every kind of character gay characters black characters every diverse kind of character that can exist in a book belongs in our libraries and you know what they belong for one very simple reason because literature reflects reality address the board please there again from the Dearborn Michigan event a sample of some of the pushback against efforts to get certain books removed from school libraries and classroom reading lists in a moment I want to bring in some other voices some journalists who cover this topic to the conversation but before that there's one other topic I want to touch on and that is the 1619 project and for those who don't know this was an undertaking by the New York Times initially a package of Articles and videos and podcasts it presented the legacy of American slavery as Central to the story of the nation with an impact that continues profound only to this day the project was expanded into a curriculum which some school districts adopted but there's been a strong backlash but more recently we've seen the curriculum canceled and banned outright in several parts of the country Chris I want to ask you to take on the question of the history of the history argument that's going on about books and curriculum look I I think 1619 project is not good journalism it's certainly not good scholarship it advances a number of just absurd and false claims I I think it's best looked at us as a form of political propaganda and yet uh while I would certainly uh if I were a school board member for example I would vote to restrict it from the curriculum in my school district I would respect the rights of schools in New York City or San Francisco or Los Angeles to include it in their curricula I would prefer a Hillsdale K-12 history curriculum I would also respect the rights of others to disagree with me and to to take that debate and to make other decisions as they see fit yeah sure well so let me ask a question to Chris because hb99 which is this uh bill on high education that is currently pending in Florida which has the support of Governor Ron DeSantis would ban discussion of identity politics and critical race Theory at public colleges and universities in the State of Florida so according to Chris's argument at the moment it would be appropriate to teach the 1619 project in certain public school districts that decide in a local way to adopt opted but it would not be appropriate to teach it at a higher level in colleges and universities in public colleges and universities in the State of Florida that doesn't make much sense to me if anything when older students should be able to discuss these ideas better than younger students so Chris do you oppose HP 999 do you think that here your friend Ron DeSantis is going too far or try to square these two positions for me so I understand what we're talking about yeah I mean it doesn't make sense to you because you you don't understand a legislation maybe you haven't read it carefully or maybe some other explanation but it absolutely doesn't do that so let me so let me go to Toe with you on the interpretation of this the measure would prohibit faculty teaching these courses from including material that teaches identity politics which the bill defines as critical race Fury something the bill does not define so this is precisely the kind of sloppily written vaguely word legislation both about higher education and in many cases about secondary education that are being passed all through the country and when we're talking in a real way about what material is being banned from classrooms at the moment that's what we're talking about broad vaguely worded bans that have a huge chilling effect because no actual teacher no actual professor in the classroom can be sure what material they assign what conversation they spontaneously have as a classroom discussion evolves might be considered across the line I appreciate your passion but again you have the facts uh totally wrong that language has since been struck based on feedback that legislators got and the bill that actually passed both the house and the Senate that is going to the governor's desk does not include that language at all I want to bring in some of our journalists who have joined the conversation and I want to start with Susie Weiss who is co-founder of the Free Press Susie thank you so much for joining we'd love to hear your question I think it's interesting that we're having this conversation this discussion at a moment where something like 70 percent of kids have a SmartPhone by the time they're 12 and therefore have access to the internet where they can find way worse things than whatever John was quoting and God knows what Untold Horrors um and I'm wondering if that changes the calculus here and if not should it I I do wonder if while the parents are getting worked up at board meetings about you know this or that graphic novel if their kids are at home Experiencing God knows what uh on the computer yeah I think you know especially in a moment in which so much material is accessible to everybody in the smartphone what we need to do is to bring discussions about difficult and sensitive topics into the classroom in a responsible manner no doubt some teachers aren't doing that no doubt some schools are instead indoctrinating kids and that is something that that should be opposed strongly um but the goal could not be for politicians to step in and try count enter indoctrination um you know Chris rufo has complained about the capture of higher education United States when he has celebrated when he was appointed a trustee of new college in Florida that he's now recapturing education I don't want education to be captured or recaptured I want teachers in the classroom to actually be able to deal with important and difficult issues whether it's sexuality whether it's the nation's history in a sensitive way that gives voice to different interpretations to different ways of understanding our country's present and our countries past and that allows students to contextualize the kind of material that we're going to encounter among the friends on tick tock on YouTube in any case that to me is more than ever the role of a high quality education and these blanket bands these blanket pieces of legislation are not going to help students and teachers accomplish that okay Crystal back to you with the question about the impact of the fact that kids on their phones can do end runs in any kind of way they might imagine on some of this material yeah I mean I look at it in the same way that you could say well you know kids kids high school kids can play hey mister and uh have someone buy them a six pack of beer uh so we'd be better off you know kind of lowering the the drinking age and I'd say no and the reason is this actually take the precise uh opposite position that what was implied is that in an age where there is a glut of content of all varying degrees of quality it's more important than ever for our official institutions especially our state institutions to maintain the highest moral ethical uh and academic standards thanks uh for your question Susie I want to go now to Betsy Bird and Betsy is a writer for the school library journal and collection development and materials manager for the Evanston Public Library Betsy thanks so much for joining us and uh you're kind of in the midst of the whole story here so um we're glad to have you and what's your question please oh well thank you so much for having me here um yeah so book Banning isn't new but Banning books that have a critical race Theory content now that is relatively new so this touches on some of what you've already said but I'd like to know um on the case for Chris like what's the worst case scenario if these particular books are not banned uh and then for Yasha what's the worst case scenario if these books are banned through legislation like to your mind what is the real threat here sure well I I mean great to meet you and I would just say I actually done some reporting on uh Evanston Skokie School District I believe that's uh kind of the region where you are and uh and look they said that they should be breaking the gender binary and the Damage for something like that is quite clear you can get kids on the path to permanent medicalization and so if you want a dramatic example of the damage this can do look no further than your local school district yeah sure well the question from Betsy I think was about critical race Theory not about uh the issues that that Chris immediately devoted to uh so let me address that uh you know I I like Chris have some uh disagreements with uh 1619 project I think it is um and and interesting and thought-provoking approach to save at 1619 alongside 1776 should be considered one of the founding moments of the United States but at least in some iterations the project has gone well beyond that saying what 1619 was quote unquote the true founding of the United States I profoundly disagree with that I don't think that students encountering that material grappling with it thinking about it is going to cause damage to our students because I believe in the ability of an education to expose students to all kinds of different ideas I believe that uh in a Time Susie was saying in which they have access to all kinds of different information through social media and other things we're going to be hearing from every side of the political discourse and we should be trusting our students to be smart enough to be intelligent enough to be inquisitive enough to come up with their own conclusions to make up their own minds about how they think about the nature of race in the country today and the history of the United States so um you know in my mind we shouldn't be banning those materials we should be bringing them in contextualizing them what I do think teachers should be doing and school districts should be doing is to make sure that on controversial issues students have access to a broad range of views a broad range of approaches we should never be indoctrinating them into one particular viewpoint but that means more quality instruction more challenging material not more book bands thank you Yasha and thank you Betsy Bird for joining us with that question I want to go now to Zach beecham who's a senior correspondent at Vox hi Zach thank you uh it's been very interesting to listen to both of you talk about the specifics of these things but I'd like to move a little bit more to a broader scope because I think the sort of philosophical underpinnings of your two positions have not been fully explored in this conversation and I guess I want to start by asking both of you questions that push you at the edges of that so Chris your position throughout this debate has been one in favor of localism primarily but I want to read you some things that you've proposed in general right you have described your project as being a counter-revolution in which you advance a defund the left strategy where conservatives quote unquote the critical ideologies within the federal agencies through executive order strangle new identity programs and red tapes and disrupt financing for such programs you see your role specifically again I quote as a narrative that can direct the emotions and energy of the public against the right targets now to me that doesn't sound like what you're saying is to each their own each Community can do whatever they want to do it's that you see these little individual battles school districts as part of a fundamental strategy for reshaping the ideological character of the United States not localism right but a counter-revolution Across the Nation it's a great question and I won't duck and in fact I embrace it and I appreciate Zach picking some very spicy uh quotes um but but what we have to understand here is that our system operates at multiple levels primarily the local level the state level and the federal level education in the United States is predominantly a state and local issue and so a conservative counter-revolution is going to mobilize along those lines of our democratic system at school boards and then at State legislatures and then the quotes that you specifically pulled from are from federal policy proposals dealing with Federal Personnel Federal grant funding Federal training programs and federal uh uh uh distributions of of resources to non-profits and contractors and such and so I advocate a conservative counter-revolution across all institutions at all levels while respecting the nature of federalism in our country recognizing that education is best fought at the state and local level while these federal policy issues are of course by the nature of their very uh existence fought at the federal level both through Congress and through executive order okay uh thank you very much for your question Zach I want to thank all of our journalists for taking part in this part of the program and I want to move into our closing round our closing round is very simply closing statements by each of you very very briefly Yasha since Chris went first for our opening statements you have the floor now again reminding people but although I think they remember in answer to the question should certain books be banned in school your answer is no and here's your closing over the course of this debate some of these questions have come to feel quite abstract to me than not I am in the class from all of the time and I think about how to get students to engage in a deep and meaningful way with difficult issues Chris and I may have some agreements about uh American values we may have some agreements for example at the theoretical level about the importance of free speech and in a class I teach on identity and liberalism and democracy I make a strong and ringing defense of free speech including again some of the ideas that are now popular on the Progressive left but what I think of as my task in the classroom is to give students the tools to make up their own minds so along with my defense of free speech I also assign articles that are deeply critical of free speech I think that's how we treat students as responsible future citizens According to some some of the legislation that are now pending on various State legislatures across the country those readings that I assign would be banned from consideration in public colleges and universities because any mention of things like identity politics or critical race Theory would not be appropriate for undergraduate instruction this is the real thing where we're talking about here it is not a question of whether this book or that book is appropriate in a classroom setting it is about the role of a government in interfering with decision makers by Teachers College professors it is the new role that some Governors are pushing for federal government even in punishing corporations for expressing in expression of political opinion I think that this move to use coercive power to reshape the culture of the United States from the top down is a deep threat to the culture of free speech in this country it is deeply Un-American and we should oppose it thank you Yasha and now Chris you have the final say here your answer again to the question should certain books be banned in school is yes last time to hear why well we have to again regain Focus we're not talking about the federal government we're not talking about universities we're not talking about corporations we're talking about children sometimes very young children in publicly funded government schools and there are two key questions that we've debated and I like to make closing thoughts on each first is a procedural question who decides what is in the classroom and what is not in the classroom I believe that it's it's up to local school districts parents and voters as well as state legislators who State who make curriculum standards rather than a kind of free-for-all in which activist teachers can do whatever they want and impose their private ideologies and in some cases pornographic materials on other people's children but the more significant question is a moral question I think what yahsha is saying is adopting a more relativistic mode in which you present things such as the 1619 project which he and I both believe contains many things that are false other things that are true and letting the students decide but to me this is like laying out healthy food and junk food in front of a group of eight-year-olds and letting them eat whatever they want and make the best decisions these are kids their education has to be shaped their education has to be carefully considered their education has to be carefully curated and I think as though as Western tradition is dictated an education for more than 2 000 years that we should be teaching kids how to pursue the true the good and the Beautiful our education should be ennobling we should not be teaching them Lies We should not be teaching them hatred we should not be teaching them propaganda and we certainly shouldn't be teaching them pornography it's up to us as parents as voters as school officials as legislators to to do the best we can within the realm of public debate using the Democratic process to make the the best possible education that requires prudent restrictions on materials that are inappropriate and and ultimately don't serve kids and their development and that is a wrap everybody I want to thank our Debaters Chris and Yasha uh for for hearing each other out even as you disagreed fundamentally you were both at the very least open to debate and we appreciate that I also want to thank our reporters thank you for adding perspective via some very good questions and to everybody out there listening thank you for tuning in to this episode of open to debate you know as a non-profit we work to combat extreme polarization through civil and respectful debate and that effort is generously funded by listeners Like You by the rosencrans foundation and by supporters of open to debate open to debate is also made possible by a generous ground from the Laura and Gary Lotter Venture philanthropy fund Robert Rosencrantz is our chairman Claire Connor is CEO Leah matho is our chief content officer Julia melfi is our senior producer Marlette Sandoval is our editorial producer and Gabriella Mayer as our editorial and research manager Gabrielle yannichelli is our social media and digital platforms coordinator Andrew Lipson is head of production Max Fulton is our production coordinator Raven Baker is events in the operations manager Rachel Ken is our chief of staff and I'm your host John donvan we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Open to Debate

Views: 832

Keywords: Intelligence Squared, IQ2, IQ2US, Intelligence Squared U.S., debate, live debate, I2, nyc, politics, conservative, liberal

Id: NgU0DNV6D_8

Length: 49min 40sec (2980 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/palsh7]

RE: Free Speech, Absolutism, public policy, democracy, activism, wokeness, religious education.

I think both debaters get good shots in. Certainly there are lines that school boards, or even state legislators, must be allowed to draw. And also, there should be pedagogical choices that we feel obliged to criticize, but know are and should be legal. Where should the line be drawn? Who should draw it? What counts as censorship and what is simply an educational choice? If we decide Shakespeare will be replaced in the 8th grade curriculum with Dostoevsky, is that "removing Shakespeare" and therefore "censoring" it? Should teachers, rather, be allowed to teach things not on the curriculum? Should teachers' classrooms be independent of the locally elected school boards, and independent of the control of their principal?

[u/Consistent-Ad2171]

Seriously?! Yascha never read "Gender Queer" ?!?! How does a debater come to a debate so uninformed regarding what he is supposed to be discussing? Is he really not aware of the specific materials that parents are objecting to? Or why so many parents now believe that the public schools - once the envy of the world - are now harmful to children? I wonder if those who defend Yascha and the ALA are similarly unaware?

That is the only way Yascha could lump Harry Potter with "This Book is Gay." Unbelievable!

At the same time, Yascha confessed that pornagraphy is "obviously" innapropriate. Does that make Yascha a book banner - a censor no less?!